this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Selfhosted

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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I've been slowly dipping my toes into self hosting.

What are the risks or disadvantages of using something like this? My plan has been to run debian with whatever services. Reading about this, it seems very complex and that makes me worried that it is more to go wrong.

On the other hand, it'll be 10 years til I learn how to do all this myself.

So is it a good idea or not?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

The main disadvantage is it will be very hard to debug and fix when something breaks.

You don't need 90% of this stuff for starting some services if you wanted to do it from scratch, just learn how to use docker compose and a reverse proxy and you'll be all set. You can always add more on later.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The main disadvantage is it will be very hard to debug and fix when something breaks

This has been my experience self-hosting the normal way though lol. Yeah I've learned a bit but it's not really an area of expertise I'm super keen on expanding. Getting my self-hosted server up was a bloody nightmare. Sharing drives, hardware pass-through with proxmox, containers, samba, mounting drives. There's an endless list of services and configurations that I fucked around with until I got it working, never 100% sure which changes were actually necessary. If an issue comes up I have to relearn the 90% I've forgotten and try and remember wtf I did to get it working in the first place.

All of this is the experience of someone who is more computer literate than 90%+ of the population.

Even learning docker-compose is a task in itself because you need to become accustomed to linux text editors and the linux file structure (which btw is still a complete fucking black box to me).

The need for an app like Cosmos is obvious. There are a million ways to fuck up your home server trying to do it yourself and most of the time you're just following tutorials made by other people. Why not just have an app that follows those tutorials for you and guarantees it's done correct and securely?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

omg I literally had to check if I had written this. We are almost the same.

Main difference is that I have a working understanding about linux file structure and am comfortable with text files, but I have only on a couple of occasions even attempted anything with docker. it makes me tired to think about.

Other than that I so feel you on changing things, not knowing what actually fixed the problem. And then having to re-learn everything from scratch on another occasion. I also feel there is a limit to how much I want to learn. I have no aspirations to do this for a living or to become extremely proficient. I have spent the past couple of weekends struggling with drives and shares and permissions etc. It should be simple but it's hard and takes such a long time.

On your advice because it sounds like you are in a similar situation I will try it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

FYI I haven't used cosmos. This post was the first I've heard of it, but I'll likely try to migrate to it at some point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

haha good to know. :)

I was not able to complete the set up. :( I am not given up on it yet though.

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